I work for Red Hat, where I lead JBoss technical direction and research/development. Prior to this I was SOA Technical Development Manager and Director of Standards. I was Chief Architect and co-founder at Arjuna Technologies, an HP spin-off (where I was a Distinguished Engineer). I've been working in the area of reliable distributed systems since the mid-80's. My PhD was on fault-tolerant distributed systems, replication and transactions. I'm also a Professor at Newcastle University and Lyon.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

DO'h!!

I've given countless presentations at many different events over the years and usually I'll either be on time or run slightly over time. On a few occasions I've finished early, but never have I finished 20 minutes early thinking that I was over time! I started my first JBoss World presentation this year at 10:20am and got into my stride. I think I got too caught up in what I was saying because at some point I looked down at my watch and noticed it was 10:50am. I obviously forgot what time I'd started because the only thought that ran through my mind was "Oh sh*t, where did the time go, I've only got 10 minutes left!" I managed to get through the remaining 10 slides or so by skipping some (fortunately they'll all be available on the web) and got into Q&A time, still blissfully unaware that I still had 20 minutes remaining. In fact it wasn't until I was walking away that someone pointed it out! So, if you were in that session I definitely apologise for rushing needlessly!